Chronicles of the towns of Upper Lusatia: Reflecting the Political and Cultural Identity of the Region
Abstract
The study sketches at first the context of the Upper Lusatian urban historiography in the Late Middle Ages and in the Early Modern Era on the background of the forming of Upper Lusatia as a historic land (or region). It characterises richly conserved urban chronicles of three chosen towns: Lauban, Görlitz and Zittau.
It aimes then - in conformity with the focus of the whole book on the analysis of the regional identity, in general on definition of regions and importance of past for their forming - on the analysis of the key events and processes in the history of the region. It deals successively with the chronists' description of the founding of particular town and their explanation of the town's name etymology.
It studies towns' relations to the kings of Bohemia and the ruling dynasty, and at last, it deals with the arrival of Christianity, influences of hussitism and later of Lutheran reformation. The urban historians, in particular the humanists, were aware (in the connection of older urban tradition) of broader contexts of the history of their town.
They included it rather in the framework of the Holy Roman Empire than of the Crown of Bohemia. They perceived occasionally more important events, their affiliation to the Upper Lusatia, the Crown of Bohemia or to Saxony, but their exposition is still dominated by the local contexts and local problems.